Our life, our way

So Brian and I had a situation happen over the Thanksgiving Holiday that I’d love to get input on.  Before vacation, we bought a Christmas tree. We tucked it away in the garage and figured we would take care of it after Thanksgiving.

A week passes and we crack open the box. Ugh, its one with individual limbs. *sigh*  So Brian starts unpacking and organizing them by color. Only to get to the bottom and find no pole. We look at the instructions and it is so wrong. It depicts a tree that is in 3 sections. Hmmm…. Brian notices the code on the instructions machines the model on the box.

Whatever….we now have a tree we can’t use. Load it back in, tape it up and head to the store. (Hoping they still have this tree for an exchange) Upon arrival I tell the clerk that the tree is missing the “pole.” She calls the manager and he comes up. So I describe to him what is missing. Gives me a funny look and proceeds to open the box. He says, “This is not one of our trees. We only sell the kind that comes in sections that stack.”

Well, crap! “Ma’m, when did you buy this?” First thought that crosses my mind is that he is going to kick us out with our partial tree! Fortunately, justice prevails and he agrees to take the return. There were no more in stock so we could not exchange. We did find another we thought would be good and so we bought it.  So crisis is solved. I felt bad because now the store is out money for the tree.

So here are the scenarios I came up with concerning what could have happened.

1. Manufacturer messed up in packing
2. Someone bought a tree, took it out and put their broken crap in, and returned it saying there was nothing wrong with the tree so they wouldn’t open it.

I’m leaning toward #2. So if it is #2 then why? The tree was only $99. Not a small amount but definitely not that much.

1. You are a very bad person that just wanted to rip of the store. Not caring if the store or another customer takes the hit.
2. You lost your job and can’t afford the tree but have kids that expect a tree.
3. You never really had money, but wanted a tree.
4. They just felt like screwing with someone.
5. They didn’t realize they re-packed the wrong tree.

Aside from #5, I can’t really say it was okay. And what are the odds of it being a #5?

#2 has some emotional aspects to it.  The poor kids. They are used to having a good Christmas with a pretty tree. But then I think….wow, if you can’t afford a $99 tree, then you have bigger issues to deal with. I think kids won’t mind presents without a tree. But if you can’t afford that tree then you probably shouldn’t be buying too many presents.

Some will argue, “You can’t let the kids suffer because of it”  Really???? So we teach kids that you should get what you want even if you can’t afford it?

And we wonder why kids are spoiled with no notion of responsibility these days. I know the banks played a role in the mortgage issues we have today but lets not ignore the folks that over bought. You should know if that you can’t afford a $150k house on a $30k salary with a wife and 2 kids to feed. Yes, its nice to say its yours but did you really think you would get the promotion to double your income in time for the ARM mortgage to end?  If you demand to be able to stay in your house even though you can’t afford it then are you not also stealing.

Some will say, “Kim, you just don’t understand. You have a nice job, a big house. You don’t understand.” Like HELL I don’t!

I grew up poorer than most of the people I know.  I remember the holiday season when there was only $100 to the family name for the household of 4. And my father’s line of work was never slated to bring in much in the cold season. “Oh, you couldn’t have been that bad off. I heard you talk about the house and mobile home you guys had.” Yes, we did. Both of which, when I think about are places that most of the folks reading this blog would never consider living in. I had apartments better than them. And I had folks call my apartments “ghetto.” LOL

So, I have still yet to find the good reason to steal. Please enlighten me.

Tradition is to save your wedding top and freeze it. Just so you can eat it on your one year anniversary. Many have said it will just taste nasty. So we decided, we don’t need that tradition.

Instead, we opted to use our new found skills to attempt to replicate our wedding top. Our instructor taught us why the cake tastes bad after being frozen a year. Plain cake would be fine frozen. Frosting is fine frozen. But once the two touch, its not so great frozen for that long.

Here are a few issues we had to deal with:

• We did not have a 6 inch cake pan
• Red frosting is really, really hard to make

So what do you think? Not bad for not looking at a picture while we put it all together, huh?

So yesterday, B and I arrived home to see a whole bunch of cars in the sudo cul de sac down the street. We assumed it was a party. Later B noticed a channel 2 news van going by while he was working in the yard. “wow, a party that is news worthy!” we thought.

Well, we were wrong. I logged onto Facebook yesterday evening to see a link to a news story about our subdivision.

“Son Charged in Dad’s Death”

I never met this neighbor. I don’t know many of my neighbors. It is always sad to hear about anyone’s death and even sadder to know it was a family dispute. I have to think, is there anything my parents could ever do that would cause me to want to kill them. Nothing. I can think of many things that would make me dis-own them but to kill? I guess I don’t have it in me.

So recently, Brian and I have been in several situations in which we weren’t sure if we should speak our mind or not. I am generally a pretty blunt person. However, I know when not to speak too.

I very much enjoy hurting someone’s feelings if I don’t like them. But if they are nice and sweet, but just clueless….what do you do? I didn’t realize how much I miss some of my closest friends. I sat and thought about it the other day. How much of my day do I spend thinking about how others will take my comments. *sigh*

Why can’t people just appreciate good criticism?

So a situation has come up where we feel we are being used. Don’t get me wrong, we love helping others. We do. But ask us to help. Just say, “Can you help me?”

I woke up this morning to a non-working DirecTV DVR. And it would have to be on the day I work from home too! Argh. So my dearest hubby investigates before he leaves for work. A good power cycle did the trick! So I get all comfy in the couch with laptop, cell phone and TV remote. Yay!

Then the remote doesn’t work. Great…do I even have new batteries? Hmmm….it can’t be the batteries. It is still controlling the TV. Its only the DVR that is not being responsive. ugh…. As a universal remote, as all DirecTV remotes are, you have to setup the remote to receiver with a code.  Fun. So I go through all the available options and nothing. I was not about to sit and watch TLC all day.

Moving on the the next thing, google. Google has all the answers right? Wrong!!!!!!

After finding nothing, I decided to call DirecTV. Their line was busy. It was still busy 15 minutes later. This is NOT a good sign.

So I call the installer guy that did our setup. His wife suggest I hit reset. I give it a try. After coming back I enter in the setup code to associate the remote, hit power and it turned off! OMG it worked. Or did it? It won’t come back on. Not even from the front panel. So I hit reset again. This time it was a charm. It came on and the DVR tells me that it has been updated and is now 3D ready.

After a while I discover some forums that say, DirecTV pushed out the update and pratically everyone with a HD DVR experienced the same problem. Yuck. That explains the phone line.

I work with applications and Brian works with servers. Both of us have to deal with situations in which we have to push updates out. Recently, Brian and his co-workers tested a process to find account for all possible issures before doing it on servers that effect users.

We see phone companies push out updates to small groups to see the effect before pushing it out to the masses. So what happened with DirecTV? I can’t wait to hear.

Or rather, my time posting here. As of this moment, I have completed my studies for the Terry MBA program. Woohoo!

Dad arrives tomorrow for the graduations and wedding!

Woohoo!

Lots of exciting things to come!